There is a new forum up just for mages at Magecraft.org.
So far it seems to be pretty active and I am looking forward to this being the next best thing for Mages to use for all your arcane, fire, and and frost needs.
As of now it just seems to be pretty basic, and I don’t know if they will extend just beyond forums eventually. However with a name like Magecraft, it really doesn’t keep them locked down to just a forum.
Sylly of Rolling Hots is writing up information on how each different tank works and how to heal them best. The series of posts are called Tank Triage.
I contributed to the Paladin one. I wrote quite extensively on each of the abilities and things that Paladins can do as tanks and she included much of it in the article.
It’s been brought up lately on a few blogs that it seems that WoW is dying down a bit right now.
The Death of WoW wrote about how he thought population and playtime was significantly reduced lately. Now another blogger is writing about his Writer’s Block. Then there was the third post about the subject in Players vs Socials.
I am inclined to agree with them, as for the last year I have been playing WoW 60+ hours per week. Lately however, this has been cut down to maybe 30… sometimes even less. All I really do is sign on, raid, sign off. I’m not even that into raiding anymore, being on sit out recently has been a blessing in disguise.
I don’t plan to stop playing, I will still raid, I will still play my alts here and there. I just don’t think I will be playing as much, going with the current trend. I don’t plan to stop blogging either, as it is a very nice outlet for me that I quite enjoy. It’s difficult for me to start writing, but once I do, I just don’t wanna stop.
In a few weeks I will be moving, as I am currently out of money. I will be living with either my father or my ‘ex’ g/f. My WoW time will probably be absolutely zero for a week or two during this period. I do however, still plan to write on this blog. The topics will probably be more RL stuff, but hey, it’s my blog I can write whatever the fuck I want.
I don’t know how many of you have seen or heard about this project Microsoft has been working on, but it’s absolutely amazing.
The technology is going to redefine gaming. It’s so awesome, that it’s honestly hard to even put into words, you must see if for yourself, Project Natal.
I am simply astounded by the things you can do with this, and the applications it can be used for. Being able to scan your own things to be displayed in game. Facial and voice recognition. And from the looks of it, you will be able to have video conferences with people that far extend the capabilities of Skype and the like.
This is the first step into virtual reality, and a great one at that. Just imagine where this technology can take us. The games that are going to be created using this… I can’t even think of. I also imagine you will be able to have a virtual avatar of yourself, so it’s like you really are in the game. Watching yourself run around “cartoonified”, it’s just… breathtaking.
I am not a big console gamer, but with this, I am pretty sure I am going to be soon. This is going to be just obscenely awesome. The applications this has are endless, and I hope to see and experience them all.
I decided to work on my druid’s off-spec, feral.
Went and bought a bunch of gems, and mats for enchants. Mostly +hit gems as I was far below hit cap. I still had 2 blues left and a bunch of other crappy iLevel 200 gear, including a level 70 trinket, but what the heck, I need to do this eventually.
I specced him to an entirely DPS spec, no tanking stuff thrown in at all, I want to maximize my DPS. With my new enchants and gems I decided to go hit up the training dummy. It took me awhile to get a hold of the DPS rotation, which has gotten significantly for difficult since level 70. After about maybe 5 minutes of working on it I was pulling 2800 DPS.
Took a second look at my gear, realized I forgot to get a leg enchant, and that I could make the alchemist trinket, figured that would increase my DPS a bit. At the same time, however, I also realized I completely forgot about glyphs. I went and bought Savage Roar, Rip, and Mangle (however, I may be changing this one to Shred).
Back to the target dummy I went. My DPS went up pretty substantially, reaching 3250 this time. Wow, didn’t expect a jump that much. I tried to find a heroic, but it was 6am server time, and on a low pop server, it’s pretty much impossible.
Fast forward to last night, did 10 man Ulduar with the guild, got a sexy new belt that brings me up to hit cap finally, and replacing 1 of my 2 blues. I sign off for a bit, been raiding for a bit, need a little break. Sign back on a few hours later, and start talking in guild about how I am finally working on my feral set. I mention that my trinkets aren’t that great, and someone says “Why don’t you get the badge one?”. /facepalm.
So I am a dumbass, and for some reason, never even thought of using the few hundred badges I had to buy feral gear with. So I splurge with my badges, buy the heroism trinket, 3 valor items, and 2 conquest items. Put all the new gear, get some more enchants done, and buy some more gems.
Now my gear is completely epic, everything iLevel 213 or above, except my 2 trinkets which are iLevel 200. I head back to the target dummy, and this time I end up pulling 3500 DPS. Third tries a charm. My gear evolved alot, very quickly, with my DPS going up by 700 in less than 24 hours. Pretty sweet deal if I do say so myself.
My Mage was frost his entire career until Wrath came out. Shortly after hitting 80, I specced him to Frostfire. Right now I am trying to figure out which spec I wanna go with.
So I went to the target dummy and DPS’d for 90 seconds as FFB. I was doing roughly 2100 DPS.
Went over to the trainer, refunded my talent points. Specced frost, replaced glyphs. On to the target dummy again, this time pulling only 1800 DPS.
Now, I knew it would be lower, because frost isn’t a good PvE spec right now… but I want it to be so much, and was hoping the difference in DPS was only around 100 or so… *sigh*
I have never ever played arcane, and I am not really geared for it, but my buddy suggested I try it out. I think I am gonna hit up a raid as frost to see where I am at first. If it is still showing up significantly lower than FFB, then I will go and spec arcane and see how that works out for me.
It’s probably about time I try out arcane anyway, it’s the only spec I have never played on my mage. It’s always good to know everything there is about the classes you play. Hell, it’s good to know as much about every class for that matter.
You just killed a boss. Most of the raid is dead. Your raid leader says “Good Job”.
Are you serious? That was a horrible job. More than half of the raid is dead, we were 15 seconds from the enrage timer, and only one of our DPS was above 2k.
This is one of my pet peeves. I really hate when someone congratulates the group on a good job… when it wasn’t a good job at all. I am always tempted to scream in vent “The fuck it was, it was a horrible job”, or in raid chat in huge caps, depending on the situation. I never do, and I probably won’t, but boy do I sure want to.
This isn’t just in PUGs either, it happens in guilds as well. Sometimes it’s just one of those nights and your guild is doing bad, or half the raid is on their alts in greens. Regardless of the situation though, there is always someone who says good job, whether it was or not.
Yesterday I ran OS 10, with no drakes up, and I am sure glad we didn’t try any.
This run was horrible, 4 people got hit by every void zone when killing the drakes. Even actually killing the drakes took forever. We trudged through the 3 of them, people taking damage from any thing they weren’t supposed to.
So we get to Sarth, trash down, yay! Do we get an achievement? I know I sure should for having to deal with this. Both tanks say they know what to do. Ok, as long as they tank it where they are supposed to, we are good to go.
Hunter MDs the boss to the Paladin Tank, he faces him in an odd direction, and then proceeds to run in circles letting Sarth breath on everyone. It was me on my Paladin and a Resto Shaman healing, we quickly heal everyone back up to full. And then the fire wall comes, every person except for me and 2-3 other people don’t get hit, we heal through the damage.
Next fire wall comes, I have to run away to avoid getting hit, right as I am throwing my heal on the tank after stopping, he moves out of range… dead. The other tank picks it up, adds get out of control, we eventually wipe at 1%.
We all run back into the instance, buff back up, the DK decides to tank, I tell him how to position it. Hunter MDs, and the DK pulls him into position, it seems to take a year, but he gets it there. I am healing the hell out of the tank, spamming heals on the raid too, seems like the shaman is just sitting there doing nothing.
Every… Single… Firewall, the same people get hit, and I have to spam them to keep them alive. About 70% or so, the shaman takes a double firewall to the face and dies instantly. No worries, I heal the rest of it without letting anyone else die, even healing through all those firewall people.
It took awhile but we downed him, even though we had 1 DPS above 2k. We actually had a hunter that was doing under 1k, not even sure how that is possible.
Bright side, I got the volcano achievement, and the 22 slot bag.
Why do I always get the bad PUGs?
Wow, 2 rolls of 100 on the same loot? What are the odds of that?
Click for larger image…
PS. I know my UI is horrible.
Blizzard has been releasing updates for years now, yet somehow, that still don’t know WTF they are doing. How can you update your software for years upon years, and still not have it perfected.
You would think, after the 5th or so screw up, they would fix the problem. Nope, still haven’t gotten it right after the 100th+ patch. Still pushing back the normal time servers will be back up by a few hours.
It’s obviously not a money issue, they have plenty of it. What is it then? Lazy techs? If so, fire them and hire new ones. Come on now Blizzard, it’s enough with all this stupid bullshit.
TLDR
I shouldn’t have downtime for a game I pay a monthly payment for.
